UI Students Unhappy with Parking, Survey Shows

A recent poll conducted by 10 University of Iowa journalism students revealed that over 70 per cent of the Iowa undergraduate community is unsatisfied with on-campus parking.
Over 300 students filled out a survey that was designed to analyze the satisfaction rate with the parking situation in downtown Iowa City. While it appears that freshmen are less affected by this issue because fewer freshmen have a car, the upperclassmen deemed it a very significant topic. The survey showed that 81 per cent of the respondents have a car here at school.
There was a significant relationship between how satisfied students are with on-campus parking and whether or not they had ever been late to class due to not being able to find a parking spot. This is appropriate in the sense that a student who has been late to class after searching for a parking spot would be much less satisfied than a student who has never been late to class for that same reason would be.
The survey showed that only 3.5 per cent of students are currently satisfied with parking at the University of Iowa. Because of this, the survey also asked students about other forms of parking to try to improve the situation.
Some of these new alternatives included having a pre-paid student ramp, installing meters with credit card capability, or being able to charge meter fees to students’ U-bills. These measures among others are being looked at by the university parking officials.
This survey had an overall response rate of 27 per cent and a sampling error of +/- six per cent.